Bugbrand Baby Bug "Bit" Crusher or Sample Rate Reducer

YouTube via djthomaswhite
"Okay, forgive me. I had the classic "thought I hit stop on the camera, but didn't, and when I started to record I actually stopped filming" while I did my 5 minute demo of this pedal. The footage here is the remaining footage I actually did capture and I will try to do another video of this pedal soon. Lovely on drum machines, robotic on vocals and an all around good time. Hard to find, but I got lucky as one does once in a great while on the bay."

MXR Phase 90 Phase Shifter Clone Tonepad

YouTube via djthomaswhite
"Here is my build of the MXR Phase 90 Clone available at www.tonepad.com. My enclosure was made by www.pedalpartsplus.com and the label is a water slide decal made in PowerPoint on a PC. The build I opted for includes matched transistors which give it a really nice tone. Enjoy the video! Thanks for stopping by, Thomas"

Thomas White Lopass Gate PCB's are shipping again

via Thomas White on the AH list:
"LPG boards are shipping out as promised. They are filtering out this week so be on the look out for a mail informing of your shipment.

I have less than 100 extra boards now and they are going fast. Expecially with most people ordering 5 or 6 meaning only about 25 potential customers left. If you want in, if you have not ordered and have been on the fence about it... now is the time my friends. My wife and I have a child on the way so I don't know that I'll have time for any batches in the future, although I hope to still be on some sort of projects like this.

$15 per board Order at: http://www.naturalrhythmmusic.com/lopass.html"

Pacific Northwest Synth 2009 - John L Rice

YouTube via matrixsynth

http://www.youtube.com/johnlrice
http://moonmodular.com/
http://synthesizers.com/
http://www.cluboftheknobs.com/
Don Martin Moog
http://www.musicfromouterspace.com/
http://synthtech.com/ - MOTM
http://flightofharmony.com - plague bearer
Walking Stick DIY Ribbon Controller
http://www.oakleysound.co.uk - Oakley Phaser
http://tellun.com Neural Agonizer
Thomas White Buchla LPG Low Pass Gate gets a mention

Part 2


click here for all PNW 2009 coverage.

Resonant Lopass Gate Examples

YouTube via djthomaswhite
"www.naturalrhythmmusic.com

Here are some samples of what you can do with the Resonant Lopass Gate PCB I offer at my website shown above. You will find commentary about this DIY project including samples of running a guitar through it, a voice through it, and music from an iPod through it. Modules used include the Oakley Sound Preamp/Envelope Follower Module, and the Lopass Gate module with a bit of TC Electronic M350 reverb at times. Songs are shown for demonstration of this module only. Thanks to Don Buchla for giving me permission to make these PCBs! A true gentleman and scholar of electronic instrument design!"

Thomas White Buchla Resonant Lopass Gate PCB's

via Thomas White:
"I am taking orders for the 3rd and likely final batch of the Resonant Lopass Gate PCB's I have produced. They are available for order at my website:

The link is: [here]

Boards are now being ordered and I estimate shipping to be no later than November 1st. You can buy now and ensure your order, or buy later and hope there are boards left. I have an excellent record of delivery so whatever works for you will work for me. I am quite glad to have interest remaining in this project. I will order more than the interested amount to have some extras for those that are not on the web that often (the maybe 1% of the diy community hah ha!).

The boards are going to be $15 each (single PCB in plastic bag for silver board finish protection) this last batch, which is still quite reasonable I hope you will find. Shipping to anywhere in the world is included in that cost. US orders have arrived in as soon as 2 days after (Los Angeles area near me) but have also taken as long as 4 weeks to show up around the world. Orders are shipped out in the order received and everyone should have something to build by the middle to end of November. Panic will not be accepted as I will make sure you are happy. Questions about specific shipping times can be posed to the folks on the E-M Forum for reports on the 1st two batches.

My docs will stay the same for now due to an extreme time shortage on my end. Parts vary anyway due to the different build factors involved. Pot types and Vactrol choices are the big variables. I encourage you to search for the various build reports on the web, in particular that on Dave Brown's www.modularsynthesis.com. He has the best parts list and a neat mod for builders looking to do something different with the onboard mixer section. Bridechamber.com has parts kits and panels that are amazing as usual. I just got 4 from him for my own units. And don't forget that Fonik has the extra super cool gate switching PCB for sale. A new batch of boards may mean a second batch of those.

Off to order the PCBs now. Thanks again guys, you have all made this possible with your expressed interest in a 3rd run of pcbs. Thanks to electro-music. Respectfully,

Thomas White
Natural Rhythm
www.naturalrhythmmusic.com"

1u LPG front

flickr by sduck409
(click for more)

"Here's my 1u motm format version of the Thomas White Buchla tribute 292c clone Low Pass Gate."

Dave Smith Instruments Tetra Pink Floyd's "On The Run"

YouTube via djthomaswhite
"Here is a sample of how the Dave Smith Instruments Tetra Synthesizer can be programmed by the user to make 4 individual sounds at once (multitimbral) and easily using the free interface software via a simple USB cable. 4 voices are presented here:

Voice 1: Classic Pink Floyd arpeggiattor pattern (E3, G3, A3, G3, D4, C4, D4, E4)
Voice 2: Hi Hats pattern (should be 16 beats, can only do 8 with Tetra)
Voice 3: Doppler Effect Space Ship with modwheel pitch bend
Voice 4: Analog Squishiness (could've done this better, but it was 98 degrees in the studio today)

All voices come together to provide a nice simulation of a classic song that has inspired many since 1973 to get into synthesizers. Not bad for one analog synth. Now go try that on your Prophet 5 (just kidding... seriously, it was a joke). The Prophet 5 is the b e s t s y n t h . . . E V E R (also JK on this one).

Thanks for stopping by and checking out another one of my videos. More to come and, as always, check out www.naturalrhythmmusic.com for more about me and my music."

Dave Smith Instruments "TETRA" Synthesizer Review Pt. 1

YouTube via djthomaswhite
"Here is my two part review of the new Tetra Synthesizer by Dave Smith Instruments. This is intended as an overview of the sounds and features of the synthesizer, with a small narrative about the over complex expectations of today's synthesizer enthusiasts that sometimes push the fringe of synthesizer elitists. Treat it like an editorial, take it or leave it. I love this powerful little synthesizer and have had more time to play with it since making this video footage last week. I hope you enjoy the sounds, and at $800 for a 4 voice true analog synth, you can't go wrong. Want more knobs? Use the editor and one of your multiple MIDI controllers.

Thanks for stopping by! Check out www.davesmithinstruments.com for more information on the Tetra and the other Dave Smith instruments."

Dave Smith Instruments "TETRA" Synthesizer Review Pt. 2


Tetra prices on Ebay

LPG 292 new design

flickr by fonitronik
(click for more)

Top:
"i started to populate a new cabinet and decided to change the layout and design for this one again (new knobs, sockets and switches)"

Bottom:
"i used the thomas white PCB and added my add-on PCB for gate control of the filters mode"

Schismatrix - Synths in Fiction

Dennis wrote in to let me know about a book he just started reading called Schismatrix by Bruce Sterling. To his surprise a couple of passages referred to the synthesizer. The following are two passages.

"A second woman knelt silently with her back to the right-hand wall, facing the garden's image. Lindsay knew at once that she was a Shaper. Her startling beauty alone was proof, but she had that strange, intangible air of charisma that spread from the Reshaped like a magnetic field. She was of mixed Asiatic-African gene stock: her eyes were tilted, but her skin was dark. Her hair was long and faintly kinked. She knelt before a rack of white keyboards with an air of meek devotion.
The yarite spoke without moving her head. "Your duties, Kitsune." The girl's hands darted over the keyboards and the air was filled with the tones of that most ancient of Japanese instruments: the synthesizer."

"Linday slept, exhausted, with his head propped against the diplomatic bag. An artificial morning shone through the false glass doors. Kitsune sat in thought, toying quietly with the keys of her synthesizer.
Her proficiency had long since passed the limits of merely technical skill. It had become a communion, an art sprung from dark intuition. Her synthesizer could mimic any instrument and surpass it: rip its sonic profile into naked wave forms and rebuild it on a higher plane of sterilized, abstract purity. Its music had the painful, brittle clarity of faultlessness.
Other instruments struggled for that ideal clarity but failed. Their failure gave their sound humanity. The world of humanity was a world of losses, broken hopes, and original sin, a flawed world, yearning always for mercy, empathy, compassion... It was not her world."

Schismatrix on Amazon

Update via Loren in the comments: "Another book that has an electronic music theme is Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. In the story a bar across the street from Stanford University has a jukebox that has nothing but electronic music on it (since its the 1960s it has mostly stuff like Cage, Stockhausen, Henry, etc). The story revels that this bar is actually a famous hang out for electronic musicians who come and actually perform in the bar, which has its own equipment for such events."

Demo Resonant LoPass Gate

YouTube via attorks
"This is a short demo of the Resonant LoPass Gate which is a clone of the famous Buchla 292c LoPass Gate. Thomas White is the one who made this possible by producing the schematics and the PCB. The PCB with components already on it I got 2nd hand from someone in Belgium. The two Vactrols on it are VTL5C6, which are the fast type. I added the components for the mixer section and got the panel, pots and knobs from The BrideChamber.
In this demo the patching is as follows:
On the LPG audio input 1 is a DotCom VCO with a triangle wave.
On the LPG audio input 2 is another DotCom VCO with a triangle wave.
On the LPG Control input is the Gate of the Doepfer MAQ16/3 sequencer. You can see me adjusting the length of the gate with the knobs on the MAQ16/3. The CV of the MAQ16/3 is going to the VCO's.
On the LPG CV 1 input is the output of a DotCom Envelope Generator (settings A-0, D-4.5, S-0, R-2). So when turning the CV 1 knob up, the output of the EG is mixed with the Gate signal. Initially the CV 1 knob is down.
The LPG's output goes to the AKAI Head Rush E2 which is switched on after a while during the music bit.
I couldn't help to put a little music in the middle of this video, hope you don't mind.
The resonance in the Frequency mode is quiet strong but I wanted to show the full turn; perhaps you will hear some clipping."

Flying Lotus - Camel/Melt

YouTube via cbsection8
"A video for the Flying Lotus Tracks- Camel and Melt. Just random videos and photos I thought would look cool :)"
some synth spotting
Some I spotted: Fairlight, Synclavier, Roland TR-606 and TB-303, Future Retro Revolution, Buchla, DIY Sequencer (who makes the circular sequencer module again?).

Update via Tor Olav in the comments: "
The circular looking seq is a diy project. The PCBs are Ray Wilson (MFOS) and the format/panel job is as stated in MOTM-ish format, layed out and designed by Thomas White."

You can find some posts featuring it interspersed here.

Buchla LoPass Gate

available at bridechamber.com

"Buchla LoPass Gate

Comes in 1U and 2U versions.
Thanks to Don Buchla for the great design, and for giving permission to Thomas White to do the PCB layout.

$30 1U Panel
$35 2U Panel"

be sure to see bridechamber for other items coming including:
Scott Stite's Klee sequencer panels - Thomas White's design
MFOS sequencer panels - Thomas White's design
Dave Brown's Computer Voltage Source panels
Oakley Ring Mod
MFOS Sonic Multiplier
Wogglebug PCBs



BTW, I just added a Dave Brown label below. Click on it for some prior posts.

Guthman Musical Instrument Competition

"The first Guthman Musical Instrument Competition presented by GTCMT and Harmonix (makers of Guitar Hero and Rock Band) will award $15,000 to the best novel musical instruments as judged by a panel of experts from Harmonix, Wired, and Georgia Tech. There will be a $5,000 grand prize — all participants eligible — given by Sharon Perry Galloway in honor of her husband, Dr. Thomas D. Galloway, Dean of the College of Architecture, 1992-2007. A copy of the Rock Band® video game, courtesy of Harmonix, will be awarded as a prize to places 4, 5 and 6." Submissions closed on Jan 15th. You can find a gallery of images, sound and video on Wired.

Pictured above:
"Jaime Oliver's Silent Drum uses a technique somewhat akin to shadow puppetry to create stunning and engaging music.

As his fingers press the flexible drum head, it forms black shapes in front of a white background. Those get picked up by a video camera and piped to a laptop where Max/MSP software turns the shapes into sound in real time.

The patches are pre-programmed, but Oliver's analog, light-based interface offers a surprisingly expressive range and precision. The judges were impressed; Silent Drum took home the $5,000 first prize."

Silent Drum Controller - Demo02

YouTube via jaiolix
"Demo02 - improvisations on 5 environments of the Silent Drum Controller.

for the latest piece visit: http://www.realidadvisual.org/jaimeol...

for more info on the controller visit: http://www.realidadvisual.org/jaimeol..."


"Jan Perschy's SGSX-H 750 is just what it looks like: a motorcycle engine with a keyboard attached.

As the teeth of the engine's gears travel at varying speeds past pick-ups that normally detect piston position, they generate tones that can be controlled with a keyboard. The third component, pictured to the left of the keyboard in the photo, is the voltage-controlled amplifier (VCA) that makes up for relative discrepancies in volume.

Perschy said his goal was to play the gears in a motor the same way that a Hammond organ plays its spinning tone wheels. The VCA module wasn't working when we made the recording below, an apparent victim of rough travel, but this was still a fascinating display."



Craig Hanson and Mike Gao


Be sure to see the Wired gallery for more. via CDM who held a similar contest "judged by drum machine pioneer Roger Linn and the members of tech-loving band Freezepop" See the post for more.

Buchla 292c Low Pass Gate clone

flickr by sduck409
(click for more)

"This is my version of the Buchlas 292c Low Pass Gate clone, based on a pcb supplied by Thomas White and the Electro-music.com forums. The schematic is based on the design by Don Buchla, who gave his permission for this design."

CLICK FOR MORE »

Lopass Gate Buchla 292c Clone PCB

YouTube via djthomaswhite

"Here is the first of 2 new videos of my Buchla 292c Lopass Gate clone project. These PCB's will be available on a limited run through the www.electro-music.com forum. Check it out if you are interested or catch my at my Youtube mail here for more details. Thanks for stopping by!"

Lopass Gate Buchla 292c Clone PCB Pt. 2


"Here is the second of 2 new videos of my Buchla 292c Lopass Gate clone project. These PCB's will be available on a limited run through the www.electro-music.com forum. Check it out if you are interested or catch my at my Youtube mail here for more details. Thanks for stopping by!"

Buchla Lopass Gate 292 Clone

YouTube via djthomaswhite
"My Buchla-inspired MOTM format (prototype) of the Buchla 292 Lopass Gate. I used the VTL5C4 (slow) Vactrol for the circuit. I love the rubbery texture and fat response of the unit. It is a Don Buchla design per a Peter Grenader translation on Matthias's Fonik Modular website with a Mark Verbos resonance mod and some small personal touches. More information about the design, PCB, mods and panel file will be on my website soon at www.naturalrhythmmusic.com"